Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

With spring in full swing, much of south-eastern Australia hasn't looked this green for years. Sydney's dam levels are well above 90 per cent while reservoirs serving Melbourne slosh over the 80 per cent mark.

But enjoy nature's bounty while it lasts. Much of the country's south-east recorded another below-average rainfall result for the key April to September period, and the Bureau of Meteorology is tipping warmer and drier-than-normal weather for the rest of 2012.

Across southern Australia, September's rainfall came in at 15.6 millimetres – more than 40 per cent below the 1961 to 1990 average, said Karl Braganza, manager of climate monitoring for the Bureau of Meteorology. Nationally, the previous month was even drier – the sixth-driest August in 110 years of records.

A shelf cloud formation in front of a line of storms that rolled through Sydney yesterday afternoon. Photo: Nick Moir

"It really was dry through most of South Australia into western NSW, much of Victoria and large parts of WA," Dr Braganza said, referring to the six-month stretch.

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"It's a pattern of drying that we have now observed for more than 15 years over in the east, and for more than 30 years out in the west.

"It has been amazing to see that drying pattern quickly re-establish itself from mid-autumn this year, pretty much as soon as the influence of La Nina diminished," he said, referring to the weather pattern that typically brings heavier-than-usual rainfall across eastern mainland states.

Winter rainfall anomaly - Southeastern Australia: BoM

Victorians living south of the Great Divide enjoyed relatively good rains in recent months. But the lush pastures and healthy river flows over the wider region owe much to back-to-back wet summers that raised deep-soil moisture levels, Dr Braganza said. "We still have water in the bank."

However, disappointing rains over the autumn, winter and spring in Victoria's Wimmera and Mallee mean those deposits are rapidly being drawn down.

"There has been a general drying, particularly across the grain-growing areas, pretty well across NSW and Victoria," said Peter Tuohey, a fifth-generation farmer and current president of the Victorian Farmers Federation.

Grain-growers in the state's north-west "are certainly looking for rain" Mr Tuohey said, as his tractor sprayed weeds on one of his paddocks near Pyramid Hill.

"It's certainly a very critical stage - the crops have just been hanging on and unless they get some rain soon they're going to struggle to finish up."

Cool and dry

Scientists say Australian winters are becoming drier with man-made actions - particularly the burning of fossil fuels - to blame.

Penny Whetton, a senior principal research scientist developing climate change projections at the CSIRO, said modelling of the climate's response to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere points to the drying in the cool seasons across Australia.

"It's in southern Australia where (the drying trend) is most important because quite a lot of our rain comes in the cool season," Dr Whetton said.

"What we see in recent years is drier conditions, particularly in the south-west of Western Australia, and more recently stretching over to the southeast."

Indeed, while Australians are accustomed to battling a variable climate, those fluctuations now rarely include wet winters. The last very wet winter - with rainfall greater than 50 per cent above the seasonal averager - in the nation's south-east was 1991, while south-western WA hasn't had one since 1965.

Dr Braganza said summer-like weather patterns are becoming more common during winter. "We've got a trend of more high-pressure systems over southern Australia," he said, with the result that rain bands are pushed south of the continent.

"Potentially the models have been underestimating these rainfall shifts."

Dr Whetton said that while climate models vary in their predictions of longer-term trends for southern Australia, one outcome seems increasingly unlikely. The scenarios "are a future where both summer and winter dry out or we might have a scenario where summer gets wetter and winter gets drier". "We're not likely to get a scenario where winter gets wetter," she said.

37 comments

Don't mind me if I don't get too excited. I'm still getting over the predictions of the never ending drought, that we would never see serious rains again and that it was worth spending $6Bn on a desalination plant.

Idiotic, Roger. No-ne ever said that, except perhaps you. Just wait till Sydney is on the brink of running out of water again, and you will be as thankful as the rest that there is a desal plant.

Commenter

cook

Location

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 6:01PM

Very clever Roger - but maybe you should try reading articles before rushing down to the comments page?

Commenter

Dirk Bottoms

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 6:13PM

Cook you have a short memory.

They have all siad the rain would dry up

Commenter

docklands

Location

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 6:17PM

A bit silly to say that the desal plant was in itself a bad idea. It's not. Good bit of insurance. The problem was/is the idiots - and I'm being kind and legally careful here - who worked out the contractual details to put taxpayers on the hook even when we don't need the plant's water.

Our climate varies naturally anyway, regardless of whether it's claimed humans are contributing. I'll just take the pronouncements of our esteemed Klimate Kommissioners with a grain of salt from the desal plant until they stop making rash predictions and fearmongering.

Commenter

Mawashi

Location

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 6:34PM

no the scientists didnt. they ALL said we would experience more extreme weather conditions. just as we have. remember cyclone yasi - worst floods ever in qld - brisbane underwater? cycles in perth.we have just finished a la nina period and are about to start a el nino.try reading scientific news not fooody results.

Commenter

smilingjack

Location

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 6:37PM

What a lot of nonsense!

Firstly, winter has never been the wet time of year on the NSW coast. Historically, mid to late summer has been our time for heavy rainfall and flooding.

And, on the subject of flooding, as populations increase and more and more land development occurs in flood prone areas, the effects of floods, in terms of home damage and lives lost, become more severe, giving the impression that recent floods are "worse" than previous floods. I believe that the Brisband floods in the 1970s were actually worse than the recent ones, and the NSW coastal floods of the 1950s and 1960s are, as yet, unmatched.

Commenter

LesM

Location

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 7:30PM

Well gee whiz cook, someone did say it and it wasn't Roger. It was the minister for silly walks, Tim Holding. It's documented and was reported in 2009.

Quote; "Incredibly, Victorian's Water Minister, Tim Holding has argued that there is no point in building new dams because, in a drought, there is no water to fill them. This misses the point. Dams are built to store water in wet times for use in drought times.

As an emergency measure, the Government is building a pipeline to divert water from northern Victoria's irrigation districts to Melbourne. The problem is that this region is on the same weather pattern as Melbourne's major reservoirs, and both will go dry at the same time. There is likely to be no water to go down the pipeline to Melbourne when it's needed."

Source is http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=3887

This was reported on the television networks as well and is publicly available. The money that was spent on the pipeline was a disgusting use of public funds. It hasn't been used and it probably won't be in the near future. By the time it may be needed, it will no doubt be unservicable (to save general revenue, whatever the current government). Saying that, I think the terms negotiated with the desalination plant in Wonthaggi were grossly wrong but the concept is correct. Backup is a good thing, whatever state you live in.

Commenter

brad

Location

healesville

Date and time

October 02, 2012, 7:42PM

The Desal isn't there because of the drought- it's there because if a big fire goes through the catchment the water is contaminated, and un-drinkable. This is why we have the desal plant- not for drought proofing, but catchment damage proofing.